ManicDDaily

In this morning’s post, I explained the rules of writing a sestina, a fairly complicated 39-line poem, which involves six repeating “end words” in a rotating/interlocking stanza form.   I also posted what I consider to be my best sestina.  (See, post re “Changing Gears – a Sestina – “Pink” both for the better sestina and an explanation of the intricacies of the form. )

As encouragement to beginning sestina writers, I’m now posting the first sestina I ever wrote (and definitely not my “best” one.)     Although the poem follows the form, you can see the compromises I made – choosing generic words  – “talked, over, up, mother, vacuum, when” as my “end words” so that I’d be able to easily repeat them in accordance with sestina rules.   (The two posted sestinas are on different subject matters, but I wrote them one after the other, so there is a kind of relationship.)

A tip here:  if you are ever doing a writing or poetic exercise, and need to choose a prompt, and you’re feeling dried out, burned up, and  stumped for inspiration, try something like “mother” or “father”.   Believe me, the words will flow.

As always, pause only where punctuated.

Vacuum

When my aunt came to visit, they talked
of old times, my aunt hunching over
her cigarette, her heavy breasts held up
by an arm across her middle, my mother
smoking as well, her cheeks like a vacuum
cleaner, puffing out.  She only smoked when

her sister came, then she became like a teenager when
folks are away; her gestures sullen, she talked
with a thoughtless sneer, the kind that filled the vacuum
of her youth, a time she thought she’d never get over
all the obstacles they’d set up, her own mother
not understanding, no wonder she got fed up.

She loved them, yes, but everything was up
from there.  Farm life.  Especially then, when
owning land was something but not, like her mother
thought, everything.  You were still talked
about, looked down on, passed over,
a farm not bringing cash to fill the vacuum,

nor nice clothes, nice furniture, nice rugs to vacuum.
Though the time they remembered that night when they stayed up
was when the government took their land, building over
their farm, a munitions plant for the war, and when
their father went north to rawer land; and they talked
of joining him, but only when their grandmother, my mother’s mother,

was stronger.   She was a favorite of my mother,
and favored her in turn, filling a vacuum
in the heart of the middle child, the one who talked
in such maddening ways, sticking her nose up
the others thought, the grandma protecting her when
they mocked, but sick now, her life nearly over.

They worked shifts at the plant, then each took over
the grandma’s care, my aunt, my own grandmother, my mother.
‘But who was with her,” my aunt asked suddenly, “when
she died?”  My mother thinking, “I had out the vacuum,
I remember that.  I pulled it out after ringing up
the doctor,” my mother, smoking hard as she talked.

“So it was you,” my aunt said, “when—” “I tried to vacuum
fast.”  But slowly my mother spoke, the smoke rising up
like traces of what could not be done over, slowly she talked.

(All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson)

This entry was posted on October 13, 2009 at 9:21 pm and is filed under poetry. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: beginning sestina, formal poem, how to write sestina, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, mother, poetry, repeating words, sestina